The Jetsons in Boulder Part 3: Charles Haertling at Mid-Century and Beyond

We're resuming our survey of Charles Haertling's architecture in Boulder with a walk through the Flagstaff and Lower Chautauqua neighborhoods.  In 1960 Haertling designed a house for Herbert Knudsen that proved to be a real showcase for the architect's talents in meeting the client's program. While some of Haertling's later efforts became associated with organic, free-flowing curves and Space Age exploration of new materials, the Knudsen House is a different kind of organic, rooted in the horizontal, rectilinear geometry pioneered in Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Style, but with a more modern, sharp-edged clarity defining mass and space, increasing freedom from right angles in plan,  and deft use of materials substituting for ornament.  Note the way the overhanging masses of the 2nd level spring from a central brick tower, and shade the entry. Looking at this house last weekend, it seemed like it must have been substantially rebuilt in recent years, it seemed so new and fresh.  

But this proves not to be the case, as the house looks now very much like it did when it was first photographed after completion six decades ago, as shown below.  It turns out that what was fresh in 1960 is still fresh, and one of those things is a clear-minded integration of building form with the natural features of the site...

From the street, you are struck by the way the house is nested in the landscape. Note the way the main entry as well as the garage door are shaded by overhanging rectilinear masses, and how those masses, finished in smooth gray exterior plaster, contrast with the brick supporting walls.  Note also the way the deep shade cast by the wide eaves brings extra definition to the simple brick mass between entry and garage, so that it seems to pop forward in a kind of counterpoint. Haertling makes this look easy, in the way Bill Evans makes a piano solo sound easy.

Richard and Helen Wilson commissioned Haertling to design their house on College Avenue in 1968, and it was built in that year.  The soft, sculptural  form of the sheltering roof and enclosing walls reflect a concern for privacy and spatial definition.  The large 2nd level deck doubles as the shelter for the carport, and the geodesic dome perched on that deck in the early photo below was becoming a fixture of modernism as well as the counterculture. Wood is employed here in order to create soft curves and rounded edges, while Haertling used concrete for compound curves in projects like the Benton House* from this era.

The house was damaged by fire in 1972, and acquired by Charles Haertling, who moved his family into the structure after repairs were completed.  It survives in its original form, with the only visible alteration being the fabric umbrella which has replaced the geodesic dome.   

Professor Stanley Gill wanted to move from the suburbs closer to his job at the University of Colorado, and defined a program which demanded efficient use of a 75 x 125 foot site in order to provide living space for a family of four, including a tennis court, indoor swimming pool, and play space for two large dogs.  Haertling's design, built in 1970, employed faceted rectangular masses and perimeter stone privacy walls to anchor the building form to the site, define exterior space, and extend interior space into the outdoors. 

The material palette includes dark-toned metal, wood, shaded glazing, and the contrasting rough texture of locally-sourced stone. 

While the external form of the Gill House has endured for five decades, the current owner told me that the indoor pool was removed by a previous owner, apparently because of interior space utilization issues rather than moisture problems, and that the configuration of the interior has undergone other alterations over the decades.

Because this tour is organized by neighborhood rather than by chronology, we're going around the corner from the Gill House to happen upon one of the first Haertling designs to be built in Boulder. Haertling, who had come to Boulder in 1953 and taught at the CU School of Architecture, designed an addition to a small house on Baseline Road for J.B. Wheat shortly after going into private practice in 1957. The Wheat House, as it is called, reflected Haertling's fascination with geometry as well as his emphasis on relating the building to its site. The addition was linked to the original house by a low, flat-roofed breezeway enclosed by floor to ceiling glass, and topped with inward-sloping triangular roof planes admitting light through clerestory windows. The multiple sources of light relate to earlier work by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The highest of the roof planes faces the sunny southwest corner, but is shaded by generous eaves as well as a lush profusion of trees and shrubs.  These enhance privacy as well as filtering the light, and anchor the house to the flat corner site...

We pass through University Hill and Boulder's downtown, and eventually wind up on another hill traversed by Panorama Drive.  Here we find the 1966 house for Roger Moment, a study in faceted, wood-surfaced solids perched on supporting masses finished in simple exterior plaster. The deep overhangs relate the design to Wright's Usonian period, while the Space Age futurism forges a link to contemporary work by Bruce Goff.  

Finally, though, the design is all Haertling, with details like corner glazing without post or mullions, and in its original form shown in the monochrome photos, a vivid contrast between the stained wood mass of the hovering upper level and the supports below it (this contrast was compromised years later by an all-white paint job). There's a vivid contrast, too, between this design and the other ones on this tour, because Charles Haertling treated each client's program, and each building site, as a new opportunity to shape form and space.  "Starting with a clean sheet of paper" was already a cliché for architects in this era, but for Haertling it appears to have been an operating principle.  As for the space with a capital S, in the mid-Sixties the architect wasn't nearly finished with Space Age themes, and we'll explore some of them in our next tour... 

*Footnote: For earlier photo essays devoted to Charles Haertling's architecture, see "The Jetsons at Home in Boulder, Colorado (Part One)", posted on June 13, 2016, and "The Jetsons in Boulder Part 2: Charles Haertling Masterworks", from July 2, 2016.

Photo Credits

All color photos are by the author.  All black and white photos are from the Boulder Carnegie Library for Local History Collection.